… hit close to home for UD last year, with one of her colleagues in the econ dept (here’s the post about him) (and here’s the original article about the conflict of interest) failing to note that a paper of his offering “a strong argument for shrinking the role of the Federal Housing Administration in insuring mortgages… was at least partially underwritten by the private mortgage insurance giant Genworth Financial Inc., which stands to benefit from a pull back in the market by FHA.”

Turns out this sort of thing is all in a day’s work for a lot of economists, who, like some scientific researchers at universities (led in the enterprise, until recently, by Charles Nemeroff and Joseph Biederman), don’t see why it’s anyone’s effing business which corporation or interest group pays for (and maybe ghostwrites) their research.